Umwelten - Murdoch University...Umwelten PAUL BAINS It would be foolish if we attempted to impute or ascribe philosophical inadequacy to Uexku¨ll’s interpretations, instead of recogniz-ing

Umwelten

PAUL BAINS

It would be foolish if we attempted to impute

or ascribe philosophical inadequacy to

UexkuÈ ll's interpretations, instead of recogniz-

ing the engagement with concrete investiga-

tions like this is one of the most fruitful things

that philosophy can learn from contemporary

biology. (Heidegger 1995: 263)

UexkuÈ ll, one of the main founders of etho-

logy, is a Spinozist when ®rst he de®nes the

melodic lines or contrapuntal relations that

correspond to each thing, and then he describes

a symphony as an immanent higher unity

that takes on a breadth and fullness (`natural

composition'). (Deleuze 1988: 126)

What busy inquirers into verbal semantics Ð

linguists, logiciansÐ haveprobedandpro®ted

from UexkuÈ ll's masterful Bedeutungslehre?

(Sebeok 1976: x)

In order to appreciate the abiding relevance of Jakob von UexkuÈ ll's workfor semiotics and philosophy I will ®rst brie¯y introduce his work and thenmove to its appropriation by John Deely. This involves the not unfamiliarmaneuver of creeping up behind a thinker and producing something newand interesting which both retains essential elements of their thought andplaces them within an entirely di�erent framework. In this case it will bethe shift from UexkuÈ ll's understandably German and Kantian idealism/constructivism (Àll reality is subjective appearance', UexkuÈ ll 1926: xv) to asemiotic `constructivism' which is objective, but not as a binary opposite ofsubjective in the classical modern sense. Objective in the semiotic sense(with its roots in Scotus/Poinsot) can include aspects of the physicaland psychical in a labile interface. This requires a certain mental agility

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for even the most subtly agile critical thinker. A paradigm shift into apostmodernism worth the name Ð at least that is Deely's challenge.Whether we retain the term postmodern or opt for Latour's (1999: 21)nonmodern1 matters little. Whatever the term, it will indicate somethingdi�erent from modernism and current accounts of postmodernism.

Furthermore, I will seek to elaborate the critical distinction between theanimal and human animal Umwelt or species-speci®c objective worlds asit is presented in Deely's work. This distinction is timely because althoughit has similarities with Heidegger's treatment of exactly the same question,I will claim that Deely provides a more articulate and nuanced analysisand those who are shocked by and criticize Heidegger's àbyss' betweenman and animal (e.g., Krell 1992, or Derrida 1989, 1991) might ®ndthis approach of value Ð even if only to distinguish themselves fromit. The ultimate issue being to what extent it can be said that a non-languaging animal2 apprehends its Umwelt or milieu/environing worldas a world at all.3 Deely's distinction between zooÈ semiosis and anthropo-semiosis intersects with Wittgenstein's approach to forms of life andexpressive capacities that could only exist in language Ð `We say a dogis afraid his master will beat him; but not, he is afraid his master willbeat him tomorrow. Why not?' (Wittgenstein 1958: }650). What wouldbe the expressive behavioral manifestation of this fear about a futureevent? To what extent is it intelligible to say that a tick has a pain, or anopinion, or lives in a `world' at all? These distinctions might forcethemselves between us and become interesting. The concept of objectivebeing (i.e., something existing only insofar as it exists within awareness)will be seen as providing the relational network for the fabrication ofspecies-speci®c objective worlds or Umwelten.

If we now translate Umwelt as objective world, we are also in a fair position tosee the signi®cance of this notion for the understanding of semiosis as a uniqueprocess in nature. An Umwelt, von UexkuÈ ll tells us, is the physical environment as

®ltered or transformed by the given organism according to what is important or`signi®cant' to it. Elements of the physical environment are networked objectively,i.e., so as to establish the sphere of experience as something superordinate to and

strictly transcending, all the while containing partially and resting upon aspects ofthe physical environment in its `natural' or `mind-independent' being. Umweltenare thus species-speci®c: No two types of organisms live in the same objective

worlds, even though they share the same physical environment. What the bat seeks(nourishment) the moth avoids (providing nourishment for bats), and conversely.(Deely 1986a: 269)

UexkuÈ ll is now much better known than in 1976 when Sebeok asked whohad bene®ted from hisBedeutungslehre (Theory ofMeaning). In fact Deely

138 P. Bains



(1990: 120) will characterize UexkuÈ ll as òne of the greatest cryptosemio-ticians of the century'. What did he do to attract the attention ofphilosophers such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, and Guattari,and particularly semioticians (e.g., Sebeok, Deely) and biosemioticiansand biologists (e.g., Kull, Ho�meyer, Maturana, Bateson)?I will rely principally on Jakob von UexkuÈ ll's son, Thure von UexkuÈ ll,

for a preparatory account of his father's work in T. von UexkuÈ ll (1982,1989). Once the essential notions have been presented we will begin ashift to Deely's semiotic interpretation which liberates J. von UexkuÈ llfrom his own somewhat counterproductive reliance on Kantian ideal-ism (i.e., objects conform to cognition, never can cognition conform toobjectsÐ the closed bubble of the representational sphere). T. vonUexkuÈ llalso appears to ultimately rely on an orthodox Kantian perspectivealthough he realizes that `The epistemological premise of Jakob vonUexkuÈ ll's theory is neither objectivistic nor subjectivist but Ð as onewould describe it today Ð ``systemic'' ' (T. von UexkuÈ ll 1989: 129) Ð oras one might also say à semiotic reality'.Jakob von UexkuÈ ll was born in 1864 in Keblaste, Estonia. He originally

studied zoology and his later work was concerned with how living beingsperceive their environment. He originated a method of research thathe called Umwelt-Forschung (Umwelt studies) and in 1926 founded theInstitut fuÈr Umweltforschung at the University of Hamburg.4 As Deleuzenotes (see introductory quotation), UexkuÈ ll is considered to be one ofthe founders of ethology. His primary interest was in the role played bysign processes in living organisms. His fundamental starting point wasthat living organisms respond to signs rather than causal impulses. Organ-isms are selective interpreters, perceiving and acting subjects, that do notrespond to external e�ects in a causal-mechanical way, but with a speci®c,autonomous response. UexkuÈ ll gives the now philosophically notoriousexample of the tick's activity to illustrate his Umwelt-theory.5

The tick as an interpreter Ð The functional cycle

In his remarkable A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men,UexkuÈ ll assumes that anyone who lives in the country will know what atick is, but given that formany people this is not the case, let us add that thetick is a small insect (Ixodinae) related to mites, that lives o� the warmblood ofmammals. ParaphrasingUexkuÈ ll's account (1957: 6±13) the life ofthe tick as interpreter unfolds in the following way:The blind and deaf tick needs to eat so it climbs to the end of some twig

or branch where it may fall or be brushed o� onto a passing mammal.

Umwelten 139



The tick climbs toward light due to a photo-sensitive skin. It can detectan approaching mammal due to its sense of smell (i.e., the mammal hasa speci®c odor caused by its sweat glands). When the tick senses the odor(or sign) of the passing mammal it drops (with luck) onto it and latcheson. The tick is sensitive to temperature and seeks out a warm hairless spot(e.g., an armpit) where it will pump itself full of blood, becoming the size ofa garden pea.

For UexkuÈ ll the point of this scenario is that `what we are dealing withis not with an exchange of forces between two objects, but the relationsbetween a living subject and its object' (UexkuÈ ll 1957: 11). Thereare certainly physical and chemical stimuli, but to stop at this purelyphysiological observation is to have missed something important!A traditional physiological account would describe the tick's behavioras a `re¯ex arc' elicited by physical and chemical stimuli (e.g., butyric acid,temperature, tactile response). The re¯ex arc would simply transmit, byway of the activity of the nervous system, purely physical e�ects of motionbetween sensory receptors and the muscles of the e�ectors. The entireprocess would involve a transfer ofmotion (like a mechanism) without anyinterpretive or perceptual activity that could not be reduced to purelyphysical terms. UexkuÈ ll will certainly recognize the physical or chemicalstimuli but argue that this approach misses the point:

We are not concerned with the chemical stimulus of butyric acid, any more thanwith the mechanical stimulus (released by the hairs), or the temperature stimulus of

the skin. We are concerned solely with the fact that, out of the hundreds of stimuliradiating from the qualities of themammal's body, only three become the bearers ofreceptor cues for the tick. Why just these three and no others? (UexkuÈ ll 1957: 11)

The answer for UexkuÈ ll is that living organisms respond to perceptualsigns (Merkzeichen) or `meaning' (Bedeutung),6 not to causal impulses.7

Physical, chemical, or thermal changes to the receptor organs are inter-preted as signs of the (not yet perceptible) `perceptual cues' of an object, asa counterpart for a speci®c behavior. UexkuÈ ll argues that the `subject'(tick) and òbject' (mammal) dovetail into one another and constitute asystematic whole or functional cycle. The organism or interpreter receivessigns from its environment and these perceptual signs trigger speci®c actionimpulses or operation signs (Wirkzeichen). The whole cycle is a processnot made of static objects but of sign relations Ð a semiosis. For example,with the tick there are three functional cycles following each other inprocessual succession: (1) the mammal's skin glands are the sites of per-ceptual meaning in the ®rst cycle. The butyric acid triggers perceptual signsin the tick that induce the tick to let go of the twig and fall (with luck)onto the passing mammal; (2) the mammal's hair now produces perceptual

140 P. Bains



signs which triggers the tick to run around until a warm, bare patch ofskin is found; (3) the temperature of the mammal's bare skin triggersperceptual signs in the tick that initiate the piercing process with the tick'sproboscis.8

In this functional cycle the mammal (object) is a connecting link betweenthe tick's e�ectors and receptors, which metaphorically `grasp' the objectlike the two jaws of a pair of pincers (à double articulation'). The `per-ceptual jaw' gives perceptual meaning to the object, and the òperationaljaw' an e�ector meaning. For UexkuÈ ll there is a counterpoint orcontrapuntal relation between the organism as a `meaning-utilizer' or inter-pretant, and the perceptual cues or `meaning-factors' of the object ÐNature as music.9 The form of living beings develop in a kind of naturalcontrapuntal `harmony' or refrain, with each other and their environ-ment.10 UexkuÈ ll (1982: 53) gives the example of the octopus, designated asthe subject in its relation to sea-water as the meaning carrier. In thisscenario the fact that water cannot be compressed is the preconditionfor the construction of the octopus' muscular swim-bag. The pumpingmovement of the swim bag on the noncompressible water propels theanimal backwards. UexkuÈ ll claims that the rule that governs the propertiesof sea-water acts on the protoplasm of the octopus thereby shaping themelody of the development of the octopus form to express the propertiesof sea-water. The rule of meaning that joins point and counterpoint isexpressed in the action of swimming Ð an energetic interpretant!So the Umwelt is a model of a species' signi®cant surroundings. The

essential claim is that organisms interpret their environment and are notmerely the passive objects of natural selection, as emphasized by con-temporary Darwinian evolutionary biology. The Umwelt consists ofsigni®cant sign relationships. However, UexkuÈ ll, in the prevailing contextof Kantian idealism, presented Umwelten as subjective appearances orphenomena, and thought of his Umwelt research as a con®rmation ofa Kantian philosophy of mind:

All reality is subjective appearance. This must constitute the great, fundamentaladmission even of biology. It is utterly in vain to go seeking in the world for causesthat are independent of the subject; we always come up against objects which owe

their construction to the subject.When we admit that objects are appearances that owe their construction to

a subject, we tread on ®rm and ancient ground, especially prepared by Kantto bear the edi®ce of the whole of natural science. Kant set the subject, man over

against objects, and discovered the fundamental principles according to whichobjects are built up from the mind. (UexkuÈ ll 1926: xv)

Before examining the contemporary value and semiotic use of the conceptof Umwelt, freed from a needlessly unsemiotic Kantian philosophy of

Umwelten 141



mind, I will give a brief account of Deleuze and Guattari's appropriationof UexkuÈ ll's work.

The key is the concept of the univocity of being. In his Vincennesseminar, Deleuze (1974) articulates UexkuÈ ll's work by moving from theconcept of the univocity of being to a Spinozist interpretation of UexkuÈ ll'snascent biosemiotics. For Deleuze, Duns Scotus only thought univocalbeing whereas Spinoza a�rms it with one Nature for all individuals,11

and UexkuÈ ll's Umwelt theory becomes an expression of the univocity ofbeing! How does this truly creative and remarkable proposition work(not unlike John Poinsot grasping the formal sign as an ontologicalrelation in 1632 Ð the year Spinoza is born) and in what way might itbe further articulated with the being of ontological relations?

Deleuze (1974) makes a `terminological detour' through the MiddleAges and seventeenth century (the philosophical black hole of the betweentimes). This trajectory is, in fact, obligatory, as one has to go back this farto rediscover ontology and its relevance to an onto-logic of signs. ForDeleuze this detour concerns the problem of the nature of being which wasdiscussed by the scholastic seminarians in terms of equivocity, analogy, andunivocity. He emphasizes that these scholastic discussions still haveconcrete relevance for us because we continue to think with these termseven if we are not aware of them.

To state that `being is equivocal' means that `being is said in several sensesof that which it is said'. For example, being is said in a di�erent way ofGod, animals, and tables. They have di�erent kinds of being and thereis no common measure between these equivocal senses of being.

To state that `being is analogical' means that `being is said in severalsenses of that which it is said, but these senses are not without commonmeasure: they are governed by relations of analogy'. This was the canonicalinterpretation of Aquinas and it is intimately linked to the concept of thecategories (e.g., substance, quantity, relation) or categorial thinking ofAristotle or Kant. The categories are the concepts which are said of everypossible object of experience Ð in other words the categories are thatwhich is said of the di�erent senses of the word `being'. Deleuze gives theexample of the òbject' lion which is not a category because one cannotsay `lion of every object of experience' (one, of course, can do this at therisk of being placed in a mental asylum). Thus categorial thought isanalogical because the categories are applied to the di�erent senses of theword `being'.

Deleuze de®nes the univocity of being thus: univocal being `has onlyone sense and is said in one and the same sense of everything of which it issaid'. This is the thesis of Duns Scotus. Deleuze understands this as a`pre-categorial' and pre-analogical thought Ð à mad thought' Ð which

142 P. Bains



will become an experimentation with relations as the violent and repug-nant `hallucination point of thought'. How can we say that God and ticks,trees and stones, imaginary worlds and impossible objects (e.g., a squarecircle) have one sense, or univocal being?Now it is possible at this point to sense that one is beginning to drown

in a set of sterile debates that have absolutely no relevance to ourexperience. I have no mastery of scholasticism, nor of the history ofphilosophy (nor do I aspire to this) but there is something interestinghappening here that I would like to focus on.12

Duns Scotus is not seeking to completely eliminate analogy from theconcept of being but to show that it cannot be exclusively analogous.He does not exclude analogy but allows for its possibility. His fundamentalpoint is that unless there is a univocal concept of being common to theanalogous ones, they will not be analogous but equivocal! In fact,he a�rms that although being is metaphysically or logically univocal,in the order of entitative physical being it is analogical. Deleuze notesthat without this distinction univocity would become heresy and lead tounpleasant consequences at the stake.

If I say being is univocal, this means: there is no categorical di�erence betweenthe assumed senses of the word `being' and being is said in one and the same senseof everything which is. In a certain manner this means that the tick is God; there isno di�erence of category, there is no di�erence of substance, there is no di�erence

of form. It becomes a mad thought. (Deleuze 1974: 3)

Scouts does not go this far. His motive is to safeguard both the possibilityof our knowledge of God and give metaphysics its proper object in aunivocal concept of being. He thought this would distinguish metaphysics(as a science of being qua being) from physics portrayed as concernedwith the reality of singular physical existents (ens realis).Now Scotus argues, following Avicenna, that if being is univocal it

follows that being is the primary object of the intellect, preceding anyparticular notion of being as applied to God or creatures (e.g., in®nite or®nite Ð being-as-®rst-known is neither in®nite nor ®nite). The intellector understanding has its own proper object or primum intelligibile, just assound is to hearing (primum audibile) or light to seeing (primum visibile).The object of the intellect or understanding is ens primum cognitum, being-as-®rst-known. Avicenna had made being the primary object of theintellect, in contradistinction to either God or substance, the propersubject of metaphysics. Scotus adopts this position with his own nuancesthat I will not pursue here.So what? Deely will claim that John Poinsot's conception of the

coinciding univocal being of relations in objective existence (i.e., as

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known), whether mind-dependent or mind-independent (ontological rela-tions are truly relations and distinct or èxternal' to their terms, whetherposited as mental or physical), is grounded in the univocity of the primaryobject of the intellect, ens primum cognitum, as understood by Avicenna.The ontological rationale of relation is univocal, neither physical norpsychical, although capable of being either depending on the particularcircumstances. Relations are transversal, they can pass freely fromwhat weconsider mind-dependent to mind-independent and vice-versa. Relationsin their univocal being as òbjective' relations are neither `real' nor ìdeal'although at any given hic et nunc they will be one or the other Ð theultimate abstract machine. There is much here to consider! For Deely itis this univocity that allows for both semiosis (the action of signs) asthe being proper to experience and the consequent ¯uid intermixing of`nature' and `culture' in our experience as constituted through ontologicalsign relations in anthroposemiosis Ð the human use of signs Ð thesemiotic web or labile, osmotic, limitless interface secreting interiority andexteriority. Àn outside more distant than any external world because it isan inside deeper than any internal world: it is immanence _ the incessantto-ing and froing of the plane, in®nite movement' (Deleuze and Guattari1996: 59).

Univocal becoming

What is of particular interest is that both Deleuze and Poinsot (mediatedto us by Deely) emphasize that there is something about univocal beingthat is pre-categorial. The `problem of the unity of Being as over againstthe multiplicity of categories applied to things' (Heidegger 1962: 23).Poinsot's doctrine of signs is amore fundamental ontology in that the actionof signs as the medium of communication is presupposed by any system ofcategories and it is semiosis, the action of signs, that allows for thesubsequent construction of categorial schemas. Traditional Aristoteliannatural philosophy was concerned with the structure of ens reale, or mind-independent existence understood in terms of substances or units ofindependent existence and their accidents or properties and character-istics. Poinsot's creative genius is to undercut this categorial approachby showing that it is from within our experience that being is dividedup between the mind-dependent (ens rationis) and mind-independent (ensreale) and that these two kinds of being come together in the sign under-stood as an ontological relation. Poinsot realizes that the formal signis an ontological relation, èxternal' to its terms. It is existentially insepar-able, but, nevertheless, distinct from its foundation. A doctrine of signs or

144 P. Bains



semiotic is not restricted to one side of the division Ð it is as `realist' asit is ìdealist'. We can come to know of the mind-independent existenceof things because the ontology of the sign relation is univocal. Theontological relation is neutral or indi�erent to its realization, whether innature or thought. Ontological relation is contrasted with the transcen-dental `relation' or rather the relativity of relative beings. A transcendentalrelation is not a relation, but rather the fact that individual existents orsubjects are not relations, but relative beings. All being is `relative' but thisrelativity is twofold Ð transcendental and ontological. That is to say,within experience we ®nd that as soon as we wish to explain or understandsome individual existent we are obliged to take account of what thoseindividuals are not, namely their relations and dependencies upon thingsother than themselves (their ontological relations). For example, the eye orvisual system is not a relation, but as soon as we wish to discourse about theeye we are forced by its manner of being to consider its relation to light.I am not my mother (thank God) but I am related to my mother Ð thatrelation is an ontological relation òver and above' my transcendentallyrelative being, i.e., as an individual being dependent on many factors otherthan my actual instantiation.13

Poinsot's semiotic approach is pre-categorial because the sign às themedium of communication functions by distinguishing connections withinexperience, and so is not only presupposed to any system of categories,but is also the instrument of their establishment' (Deely 1985: 476). Whatneeds to be emphasized is that the sign is univocal in its being as anontological relation and that this univocity is `grounded' in the univocity ofbeing-as-®rst-known, the primary object of the understanding.In otherwords: univocal, semiotic realityÐthe reality of experienceÐ is

neither reducible to the mind's own workings (e.g., as in the Kantiansynthesis) nor to that of a prejacent external physical world in which themind has no part. It is a limitless interface where the line between whatis and what is not independent of interpretive activity is a continuallyshifting semiotic process. As Deely observes so well in numerous articles14

what comes ®rst in experience is neither ens reale nor ens rationis. It isthrough experience that being divides into what is not independent ofunderstanding (ens rationis) and what is independent of my understanding(ens reale). Thus, there is a `prederivative' sense of being, and this `sense'of being `whatever it be, is prior to being in either of the derived senses;and it is this prior being Ð the being proper to experience Ð that semiotictakes as its province' (Deely 1988b: 73). This priority of univocal being isnot a linear temporality which would be left behind, it is intrinsic to thepossibility of being able to predicate anything at all (e.g., `what is that?').Univocal being is a ùnique' or singular notion, sui generis. It is the

Umwelten 145



happening of experience, or the eventing of the event, neither ìnside' noròutside' Ð the non-subjective `thisness' or hecceity of the signifying eventor action of semiosis. As we have noted Scotus is inspired by Avicenna inhis understanding of univocal being, as isDeleuze, who understands `sense'in terms of Avicenna's univocity. For Deleuze it is the univocity of sensethat allows the escape from the circle of the proposition.We are established`from the outset' within sense as that which allows for the articulation ofthe di�erence between things and propositions. Sense, or univocity, ispresupposed and is that which allows for the distinction between theparticular and the general. For Avicenna univocity is the third state ofessence, essence as sense, the `pure event', indi�erent to all opposites.15

This Persian doctor and metaphysician (Ibn Sina) seems to be a criticallyimportant and somewhat neglected conceptual persona.16

In fact, we are able to see in hindsight that what Avicenna had given a name to

was nothing less than themateria prima of anthroposemiosis. The primum cognitumof medieval thought turns out to be precisely what the linguistic sign informsin enabling us through discourse to argue about what is and what is not in nature

as about how experience is and is not rightly to be interpreted in any given contextof discourse, including the metaphysical. (Deely 1988a: 8)

Deely will argue (with some reference to Heidegger Ð for the non-languaging animal everything is ready-to-hand, not present-to-hand) thatthis apprehension of univocal being by the understanding or intellectis only available to animals operating in language (currently humans),because language entails the grasping of relations of signi®cation, as such,rather than perceptible aspects of things. Non-languaging animals areaware of their surroundings and of relative beings, but not of the relationsthemselves because they are not sense-perceptible. Univocal beingrequires an understanding of something that is not perceptible and canonly be expressed through linguistic means. In such an incorporealscenario this would be what di�erentiates human communication fromanimal communication. We will inevitably return to this `problematic'proposition!

Let us recapitulate: There is a pre-categorial, `prederivative' under-standing of being (or sense) as univocal. It acts as the permeable, osmoticinterface or articulation between the orders of being and non-being, orthe mind-dependent and mind-independent as they are distinguishedin our experience. It allows for the communion between thought andbeing. It is superior to any categorial standpoint in that it allows forcategorial interconnections by distinguishing connections or relationswithin experience.

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The thesis is that relation, rather than substance or accident, is to serve as thebasis for all semiotic explanation, and that the ontological explanation in thetraditional categories of substance and accident, to whatever extent it is valid,

is subordinate to the standpoint of semiotic by reason of being assimilable to(and subsequently analytically derivable from) transcendental relation andontological relation generally. (Deely 1988b: 80)

Thus, as Deely often observes, semiotic is àn integral philosophy ofexperience' that goes beyond either Aristotelian or Kantian categorialthought. Aristotelian realist categories are concerned with nature as itis supposed to exist independently of human thought. Kantian idealismtakes the opposite view, claiming that the order of beings as existing inthemselves is forever hidden from human understanding. The Kantiancategories represent universal forms or structures that are presupposedto any judgments about the world of appearances or phenomena, not tothings in themselves. Deely argues throughout his work that althoughPoinsot recognizes the inadequacy of the Aristotelian categorial schemafor the perspective of semiotic which understands experience as a productof sign relations or semiosis, it is Peirce's semiotic categorial scheme(Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness Ð which are three classes of rela-tions Ð monadic, dyadic, and triadic) that begins to truly develop thisrealization of the interpenetration within experience of a `living tissue' ofsign relations that does not preclude mind-independent elements fromexperience (as does the Kantian schema). This interpenetration withinexperience of `nature' and `culture' is possible because of the univocal beingof the ontological sign relation (Peirce's thirdness as triadic relation)in which they come together. Deely does indicate that in Hegel's Logic(`Being, as the immediate indeterminate, is in fact nothing') there is aconfused recognition that not all relations are the work of the mind, butthat Hegel never clearly articulates their interrelation in experience, noradequately isolates the ontological rationale of the univocity of relation.17

Furthermore, Deely will argue that it is Peirce's `semiotic categories'that account for the transformation of the species-speci®c objectiveworld of the animal Umwelt into the species-speci®c objective world ofthe human Lebenswelt, within which it is realized that its human Umwelt(or Lebenswelt) is di�erent from, and not coextensive with the sense-perceptible physical surroundings, and understands the imperceptiblerelation of signi®cation as such. The ànimal' remains captured byits Umwelt which never becomes present to it as an Umwelt Ð althoughit is clearly aware of sense-perceptible aspects of its surroundings.(Heidegger will say the animal is `benumbed'.) Although Heidegger's(1995) analysis is `violent and awkward' (Derrida 1991: 111), it is obviousthat Heidegger is struggling to di�erentiate zooÈ semiosis (as common to

Umwelten 147



animals) from anthroposemiosis (as unique to linguistic animals) withoutthe necessary semiotic tools. The approach taken by Deely, is neitheranthropocentric/morphic (in fact, it precisely avoids misplaced linguisticanthropomorphism), nor bad biology; it `simply' distinguishes betweendi�erent uses of sign relations. Physiosemiosis, phytosemiosis, zooÈ semio-sis, anthroposemiosis. The argument is that non-human animals use signsand communicate, but they do not live in language, and do not graspimperceptible sign relations as such. Their apprehension terminates insense-perceptible aspects of the physical environment. Or, to be morereserved, we can say that currently we have no knowledge of a non-humanlinguistic animal that ipso facto grasps, or rather understands, the incor-poreal sign relation as distinct from its terms. The species-speci®c humanLebenswelt arises with the awareness of the distinction between the relationand the things it relates, thus allowing for the arbitrary systems of com-munication that we designate as languages Ð and as a consequence fortextuality and the, in principle, in®nite malleability of the Lebenswelt.Eugen Baer succinctly states the matter:

Semiotics [the human study of semiosis] begins ontogenetically as à momentof anthroposemiosis' with the insight that experience depends on the action of

signs. Once signs are recognized as imperceptible ontological relations whichcorrelate objects and/or things, we are at the threshold of what for Deely isspeci®cally anthroposemiotic, the ability to introduce into objects the dimensionof stipulability. This underlies the capacity for language and renders semiosis in

principle unlimited. The stipulable sign is the characteristic trait of what Deely calls`text'. And it is this capacity to produce texts that distinguishes anthroposemiosisfrom zooÈ semiosis. It is species-speci®c for human semiosis.

What exactly is textuality? Texts are strings of signs that are in principleexchangeable (substitutable) with other signs in accordancewith a given code. Textsare thus transformable from one set of objects to another, precisely because their

`being' resides not in things or objects, but ìn-between' them. (Baer 1992: 355±356)

Both Bergson and Ruyer (who are both major in¯uences on Deleuze andGuattari's work) make a similar distinction, although less analyticallynuanced, between the animal and human animal use of signs. Ansell-Pearson (1999: 54) reminds us that for Bergson in Creative Evolution, theinstinctive signs which characterize the language of insects are limited andattached to speci®c objects, `the sign is adherent to the thing signi®ed'(Bergson 1975: 174). What characterizes human language is the ability ofsigns to be transferred from one object to another; they become in®nitely`mobile' rather than àdherent' Ð `the intelligent sign is mobile' (Bergson1975: 175). There is a di�erence in kind between the human and animaluse of signs (moreover, animals don't know they are using signs!). In fact,

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there is in these remarks of Bergson a ¯eeting glimpse of the distinctionbetween formal and instrumental signs and the fact that ìdeas' are imper-ceptible formal signs. The word is an èxternal thing' (i.e., an instrumentalsign) and an ìmmaterial thing' or idea (i.e., a formal sign). The maininsight of Bergson is that without language, as the awareness of therelation of signi®cation, which allows the sign to be `mobile' (or deter-ritorialized), the animal is `riveted' to materially present sense-perceptibleobjects Ð the animal is captured or riveted to an Umwelt, whereas thehuman animal lives with the understanding of being-in-an-Umweltand can play with the relations that constitute it, thereby having thepossibility, amongst others, of developing and discussing philosophies oflife and semiotics.Ruyer (1964) makes essentially the same observation when discussing

the well known case of the blind, deaf, mute, Helen Keller. Ruyer discussesthe matter in terms of the di�erence between the animal's use of stimulus-signals and the human's grasp of sign-symbols. The di�erence being thatthe human animal grasps the relation of signi®cation as such:

To understand a signal as a signal, following a conditioning process, is not at all

to understand it as a symbol. On the contrary the signal-function blocks the symbolfunction. The decisive point for Helen Keller is that `water' wasn't necessarily asign-signal by which water was requested or expected, but was `the name of the

substance whereby it could be mentioned, conceived, remembered, celebrated.' Atthat moment, the meaning, for her, of the word `water' could not be interpreted asthe last phase of a conditioning.As long as one attempted to conditionHelen Keller toa word, one in fact prevented her from understanding what language was. It was

necessary that she suddenly realized that the word had a meaning. A discovery thatleads to the discovery that everything has a name, and that every name had ameaning. From now on she was no longer in an animal Umwelt, but in the world.

(Ruyer 1964: 98±99)18

In fact, Deleuze and Guattari make a related observation in AThousand Plateaus (1988) when they refer to the well known exampleof the bees dance studied by Karl von Frisch (1950) as taken up byEmile Benveniste. Deleuze and Guattari are claiming in the plateau(Postulates of Linguistics) that the ®rst determination of language is nottrope or metaphor but indirect discourse. The bee

has no language because it can communicate what it has seen but not transmitwhat has been communicated to it. A bee that has seen a food source can com-

municate themessage to bees that did not see it, but a bee that has not seen it cannottransmit the message to others that did not see it. (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 77)

For Deleuze and Guattari language has to be able to go from a second toa third party, neither of whom has seen. Language is deterritorialized

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and can be passed on ad in®nitum. As Maritain (1957) notes, commentingon Frisch's work, what this means is that bees use signs Ð and they do notknow they are using signs. The bees dance is no more a language than thefact of a dog sitting when his owner says `sit'.19

Deleuze and Guattari will argue, following Spinoza's medieval ethicsand proto-ethology, that a thing, animal, or person are de®ned by move-ments and rests, speeds and slownesses (longitude) and by a�ects(intensities) latitude. These are assemblages or hecceities (taking up andmodifying Duns Scotus' term) which are not individuations of an alreadyindividuated object or person, but of relational events that can include,for example, a time of day, a season, or anything at all _ a text, a socialbody. This is also called a plane of immanence or of composition havingno supplementary dimension Ð an abstract machine. It is a plane withn dimensions growing and contracting with respect to the relations andassemblages being formed and dissolved between relative beings. An eventin which both `subjects' and òbjects' are being produced and linkedthrough relations between the two (relative beings and the relations they areinvolved in) Ð Interbeing, always in the middle. `HECCEITY=EVENT'.

Deleuze and Guattari claim that beings are distinguished not ana-logically in terms of genus or species, but by their degrees of `power' whichcorresponds to a certain capacity to be a�ected. They construct a univocalSpinozist ethology or cartography of a�ective capacities. The univocityof being is expressed through one determining factor: what are thea�ections or relations that a being can enter into Ð what assemblages canit participate in Ð what are its becomings? The only di�erence from thepoint of view of univocal being is the di�erent relations that a being canenter into. Univocity forDeleuze ìs said' of completely di�erent, equivocalbeings (boy, table, girl, train, god). À single and same voice for thewhole thousand-voiced multiple' (Deleuze 1994: 304). This is no longera conception of genera and species but of the assemblages into which eachbeing is capable of entering. In other words a being is de®ned by therelations and assemblages it can enter intoÐ tell mewhat relations you canenter into, and I will tell you who you are. These relations, as the relationsof relative beings, are univocal in their being as relations. And this givesus precisely the distinction in our experience, between relative beingsand their relations prior to a categorial schema. Deleuze puts it thus:`so an animal, a thing is never separable from its relations with theworld' (Deleuze 1988: 125). Gregory Bateson and many other biologistswill make the same observation Ð for Bateson the ùnit of survival' wasorganism+environment.

In Deleuze and Guattari (1988) (the book of subjectless events andbecomings) this approach is illustrated with (among many other striking

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and creative examples)UexkuÈ ll's notorious tick. The tick is viewed in termsof its a�ective capacities or relations, rather than in terms of physiology.As Ansell-Pearson notes in a brief but insightful encounter with the workof Deely,20 that this is a `semiotics of a�ect' (Ansell-Pearson 1999: 187)in which UexkuÈ ll's Umwelt theory and concept of organism can beunderstood in terms of the scholastic notion of `species' rather thanin Darwinian terms of relations of descent. The organism does indeedinhabit a `species-speci®c objective word' (the expression is Deely's) inthat its world is speci®c to its biological type; but also because its `species'whether impressed or expressed are whatmakes its `world'. And as we havealready noted, at some length, scholastic expressed `species' are formalsigns or interpretants that are not `subjective' or in the modern classicalsense. Their whole being as ontological relations is in `being-toward.'This is what makes Umwelten òbjective', or open worlds, rather than`subjective', closed worlds. Objective worlds are not in binary oppositionwith the modern sense of subjective. Objective worlds as experiencedinclude a shifting amalgam of mind-dependent and mind-independentaspects (or the `psychical' and `physical') through the univocal being of signrelations. This dynamic is what allows for the enterprise of constructivescienti®c realism, through the critical control of objecti®cation and thepossibility that some theories remain purely objective ®ctions (i.e., withno physical lining), or return to the status of ®ctions (e.g., the ether,phlogiston) and others become òbjective' testimonies to nature's subjec-tive being (i.e., its being independently of being known). For example, theearth's tectonic plates now drift and collide, over and above our thinkingthat they do, although for many years such a `®ction' was ridiculed. Somethings are not reducible to our experience of them, but paradoxicallybecome more substantiated and ìn-themselves' the more we are relatedto them, or the more they are experienced Ð `the truth of the relative' orthe truth of relations.21

Species-speci®c objective worlds

A recapitulation: Deely has systematically and continously argued for theimportance of the notion of Umwelt or species-speci®c worlds for under-standing the action and being of signs in the constitution of an objectiveworld, i.e., a world to the extent that it exists in any way as known.As experienced, the physical world is objective, it is an object of awareness.The distinction between objects of experience that are only objects ofexperience and those that are also physical existents also occurs withinexperience (which leads some thinkers to an idealism in which experience is

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`subjective' and we can know nothing apart from our `constructions' orrepresentations). Experience is not locked into realism or idealism, it isunivocal in its being, including both the constructions of the mind andelements that are not reducible to the mind's constructive capacity.

Instead of a dichotomy between subjective (observer dependent)and inaccessible objective (observer independent) there is a trichotomy,or triadic semiotic relation, including an experiencing organism (orinterpretant), the object experienced, and the basis on which the objectexists as experienced. I will present an extended quotation from Deelywhich I would suggest indicates that semiotics has fortunately progressed,in his hands, beyond anything Heidegger's phenomenology was able toarticulate:

That in which experience consists in the being proper to it is the sign relation,or rather, the network of sign relations colorfully called `the semiotic web' byThomas Sebeok in a metaphor borrowed from the German biologist Jakob vonUexkuÈ ll. This web is, on the one side, superordinate to physical nature _ , on the

other side, subordinate to the constitution of the knower (the cognitive organism).The being proper to experience is not the being of objects, still less the being ofthings. It is the being proper to the network of interpretive relations according

to which the cognitive organism is inserted in the environment not merely as onephysical thing among others (one substance with its accidents among othersubstances with their accidents), but as a being whose objective world is shot

through and constituted by cares and interests species-speci®cally proper to itaccording to its biological constitution. Beyond this, in the case of human beings,the objective world is further structured through linguistic relations (a species-unique type of semiotic relation) which convey a cultural heritage linked, not

directly, but indirectly only, to a speci®c biological constitution. `Being-in-a-world', that is to say, an objective world as distinct from a merely physicalenvironment, is not something uniquely human, though `being-in-a-world' that

has the texture of linguistic understanding woven into its fabric or perceptual andsensory objects is uniquely human. (Deely 1992: 309)

Which returns us to the di�erence between the animal Umwelt and thehuman animal Umwelt, or Lebenswelt, as Deely will sometimes call it. Aswe have already noted, this distinction lies in the peculiarity of the humananimal's ability to interact and play with pure relations. This is equivalentto the emergence of language and allows for the possibility of inventingthe Umwelt in ways that are not strictly proportionate to biologicallydetermined positive, negative, or indi�erent a�ects. Deely gives theexample of legal systems which distribute property not on the basis ofspecies territoriality but àccording to an abstract plan of objectiveboundaries imposed upon the physical environment as identi®ed with

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this or that of its features, for example, the Mississippi River as separatingIowa from Illinois for a certain stretch' (Deely 1994a: 221). The essentialpoint here is that the human Umwelt is not `riveted' or `captured' by itsspecies-speci®c world, as Bergson would say, but is able, through thehuman understanding of relations as distinct from related objects, torestructure its Umwelt in in®nite ways Ð an unbounded semiosiswithin anthroposemiosis. A human-becoming itself in its unlimitedness.As Deely notes (1994a: 218±219) the notion of Umwelten or species-

speci®c worlds is now well established in semiotic studies to distinguishbetween the prejacent physical environment and the objective world of anorganism.22 UexkuÈ ll imagined the Umwelt as like an invisible bubblesurrounding the organism:

_ we must ®rst blow, in fancy, a soap bubble around each creature to represent its

own world, ®lled with the perceptions which it alone knows. When we ourselvesstep into one of these bubbles, the familiar meadow is transformed. Many of itscolorful features disappear, others no longer belong together but appear in new

relationships. A new world comes into being. (UexkuÈ ll 1957: 5)

In the same extraordinary work UexkuÈ ll also compared the Umweltor world of experience to a spider's web. Às the spider spins its threads,every object spins his relations to certain characters of the things aroundhim, and weaves them into a ®rm web which carries his existence' (UexkuÈ ll1957: 12). The semiotic web.In order to illustrate the constitution of an objective world Deely

(1994a: 219) combines these two notions ìnto the single model of a kindof geodesic sphere whose interior as well as its surface consists of a seriesof intersecting lines'. He notes that the spherical image is only analogousas the surface of the `sphere' is irregular and determined by the radii rela-tions linking the individual with elements of its physical surroundings(some of which are very close and some às far as alien galaxies'). Themodel is so valuable and interesting that I will quote from Deely's ownwork which would be absurd to paraphrase:

Each intersection is an object, each line a relationship. Lines radiate outwards fromthe center where each of us stands to the surface of the sphere, and lines extend

also crosswise, intersection the radii. The radii lines represent relations betweenideas and objects, the intersecting lines represent relations between objects, andthe intersections themselves represent the objects. Thus, the objective world is

the sphere of an individual's experiences built up out of relationships, and theinternal constitution of this sphere is precisely that of a web the various inter-sections of whose strands present to us the objects according to the meaning of

which we lead our lives. At the center of such a three-dimensional spider's web,by maintaining and elaborating it, we live our lives. (Deely 1994a: 219)

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It is crucial to understand that in this model the surface of the geodesicsphere of experience is a `virtual intersection or interface between natureand culture'. The external senses guarantee that elements of the physicalsurroundings are objecti®ed in experience in interaction with our bodies.Now this model of experience is further (and in®nitely) complexi®ed bymemory and imagination which add new radii and further intersections.Thus, there are incorporated into this web of experience elements thatdo not correspond to actual physical environmental in¯uences. Now,as UexkuÈ ll and Deely note, this web of experience is determined bythe biological constitution of the organism or species Ð it is a species-speci®c objective world. As we have already had occasion to observehuman animals understand the relational strands themselves whichstructure sense-perceptible objects and which can now be used torestructure the Umwelt, starting with the realization that it is an Umwelt!And then perhaps wondering what other Umwelten are like, which asDeely observes is a priori impossible in the original Kantian scheme.

Either Umweltensforschung is a form of transcendental illusion, or, if, for

example, von Frisch really did interpret with some exactness the bee's dance orvon UexkuÈ ll the toad's search image Ð then von UexkuÈ ll, in extending Kant'sideas to biology, was doing something more, something that the Kantian paradigm

did not allow for, namely, achieving objectively and grasping as such anintersubjective correspondence between subjectivities attained through the signrelation. (Deely 1990: 123)

Deely argues that UexkuÈ ll is going beyond the Kantian paradigm in spiteof himself. UexkuÈ ll saw the Umwelt as a `subjective' or phenomenal world,as opposed to an òbjective' world, but the semiotic approach to experiencecannot be assimilated to Kantian idealism or any simple realism. Semioticreality is an interpenetration of the mind's own constructs togetherwith aspects of a mind-independent environment woven seamlesslytogether in the ontological univocity of sign relations. Semiotic objectivity(esse objectivum/objective being), as we have had much occasion to note,is not assimilable to the modern opposition between subjective andobjective. It is `the truth of the relative'. Objectivity in this sense is opposedto both subjectivity and objectivity as understood in classical modernidealism. As Deely notes (1990: 122) the reappropriation of the scholasticnotion of objectivity (particularly as formulated by Poinsot Ð andimplicitly developed by Peirce) is `necessary to make sense of the very titlevonUexkuÈ ll gives to amain section in one of his key essays [1957: 73], ``Thesame subject as an object in di�erent Umwelten'' '.

This kind of objectivity is engendered by Peirce's interpretant or propersigni®cate outcome of a sign which makes present an object other than

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itself to some third, in a mediated semiotic interaction irreducible todyadic physical interactions. Guattari (1995) suggests we should place theconcept of an enlarged de®nition of `subjectivity' within this relationalperspective:

So we are proposing to decentre the question of the subject onto the question

of subjectivity. Traditionally, the subject was conceived as the ultimate essenceof individuation, as a pure, empty, prere¯exive apprehension of the world, anucleus of sensibility, of expressivity Ð the uni®er of states of consciousness.

With subjectivity we place the emphasis instead on the founding instance ofintentionality [which is derived from relationality] This involves taking the rela-tion between subject and object by the middle and foregrounding the expressive

instance (or the interpretant of the Peirceian triad). (Guattari 1995: 22)

For Guattari it was imperative to enlarge the de®nition of subjectivitybeyond the classical opposition between individual subject and society andall his work involved developing a more `transversalist' or 'schizoanalytic'approach to subjectivity that recognized the importance of non-linguisticelements irreducible to the linguistic analysis of the Saussurean tradition.Guattari a�rmed the value and importance of Peirce's semiotics overand above European semiology throughout his work and in Chaosmosis(Guattari 1995) takes up Peirce's concept of the diagram as an ìcon ofrelation'.23 It should also be noted that part of Deely's contribution tothe commonwealth of ideas lies in his being one of the most astute con-temporary readers and innovators of a post-Perceian semiotics capableof doing justice to our experience, rather than engaging in elaboratefeats of explaining it away.

Heideggerian Umwelten

Heidegger (1995), in some of his most relentless and stunningly benumbingre¯ections, presents the thesis that `the animal is poor in world'.24 I willnot attempt here to give a complete account of Heidegger's 1929±30biology lectures,25 but simply attempt to indicate the relation betweenHeidegger, Peirce, and Deely and thereby demonstrate the contemporaryrelevance of a semiotic appropriation and reformulation of UexkuÈ ll'sUmwelt theory.26

As Ansell-Pearson notes (1999: 188, 240) there is an aspect of UexkuÈ ll'stheory that is not fully developed in Deleuze and Guattari's approach,namely, that there is a `becoming' intrinsic to the activity of the animal-Umwelt. Ìn other words, the peculiar ànimality' of the animal is notsimply something `given', and there needs to be posited an animal becomingas well as a becoming-animal. For Heidegger (and many others in their

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own way) what is peculiar to the animal is the way it is captivated by itsenvironment and is thus `poor in world.' What might this perhapstroubling and `problematic' expression mean?

As a possible theme for a fundamental problem of metaphysicsHeideggerasks the question What is World? And as a strategy for dealing withthis question he undertakes a comparative examination of three theses:the stone is worldless, the animal is poor in world, man is world-forming.Heidegger starts from the middle by asking what it means to say thatthe animal is poor in world and quickly notes (Heidegger 1995: 192) thatat ®rst sight this thesis appears `to run directly counter to the mostpenetrating fundamental re¯ections in biology and zoology, when weconsider that ever since J. von UexkuÈ ll we have all become accustomedto talking about the environmental world of the animal'. How doesHeidegger deal with this apparent contradiction? His thesis unfolds inthe following way:

Being poor in world implies poverty in the sense of possessing less.But less of what? (Heidegger 1995: 193). Heidegger, taking many of hisexamples from UexkuÈ ll, starts with the proposition that the animal hasfewer relationships than human Dasein has at its disposal. For example,the bee, the frog, or the cha�nch operate within a strictly limited domain ofrelations, but there is something more crucial than this. Heidegger willclaim that the manner in which an animal can `penetrate' whatever isaccessible to it is also limited. His fundamental claim, which will becontinually reworked and examined, is that the animal does not knowthings as things. As a ®rst approximation it lacks the structure of theapophantic as. This is, in fact, strikingly close to Deleuze and Guattari's(1988) analysis (especially in the plateau `The geology of morals').A threshold of deterritorialization is crossed wherein

the scienti®c world (Welt, as opposed to the Umwelt of the animal) [allows for]the translation of all the ¯ows, particles, codes, and territorialities of the other

strata into a su�ciently deterritorialized system of signs, in other words into anovercoding speci®c to language. (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 62)

The worker bee is familiar with the color and scent of the blossoms itfrequents but does not know the stamens of these blossoms as stamens.Nor does it know of the number of leaves or of the roots of the plant.Contrary to the animal, Heidegger will argue that the world of man is moreextensive both in its penetrability ànd in respect to the manner in which wecan penetrate ever more deeply in this penetrability' (Heidegger 1995: 193).This is why man is characterized as world-forming. Heidegger emphasizesthat at this point in the analysis there is no question of claiming some

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hierarchical evaluation or superiority for man and incompleteness for theanimal.To get closer to understanding the sense of word poverty Heidegger

turns in his comparative examination to the stone which is worldless.The stone lies on the path but does not touch the path. Everything aroundthe stone is inaccessible to the stone itself (Heidegger 1995: 197). The stoneis not deprived of anything (it is not poor in world) because it has no accessto the beings amongst which it turns up. Thus there is a distinctionemerging between the speci®c manner of being pertaining to animals,and the speci®c manner of being pertaining to a material thing. The rockis given in some way to the lizard but not as a rock Ð the rock is notaccessible to the lizard as a being. The blade of grass is a `beetle-path' forthe beetle, but it is not a blade of grass. Heidegger will claim that themetaphysical signi®cance of the speci®c relationships of animals with theirenvironments has never been fully appreciated. If the animal has someaccess to the beings around it in a way that the stone does not, the animal isnot deprived of world, but has world.Heidegger frankly admits that the preliminary results of his comparative

examination are perplexing and apparently logically impossible: `theanimal reveals itself as a being which both has and does not have world.He argues that concept of world must therefore need further clari®cation.I will pass over the discussion of solipsistic, modern idealism (Descartes,

Kant, Hegel) in which man is initially understood as subject and con-sciousness, existing in its own isolated ègo-sphere', and take the story upwith Heidegger's clari®cation of the `proper being or proper peculiarityas the manner of being speci®c to the animal and its way of being properto itself ' (Sich-zu-eigen-sein) (Heidegger 1995: 231). In distinguishingthe organism from a machine Heidegger (like many others) notes thatthe `peculiar' character of the organism lies in its `capacity' for self-production, or self-preservation. What is this autopoietic, `subjectlessself'?The capacity for molecular self-production indicates a kind of boot-

strapping or circular production in which the capacity of the organismto produce itself `does not leave itself behind' (Heidegger 1995: 233), orescape itself. To use Heidegger's novel terminology the capacity forself-production remains proper to itself without any self-consciousness orre¯ection. The essential being of this self-productive capacity is properlypeculiar (Eigen-tuÈmlichkeit). Heidegger reserves the expression `self'and selfhood for the speci®cally human peculiarity of possessing re¯ectionand consciousness beyond the proper peculiarity of self-production orautopoiesis, proper to all organisms including human animals.27 Theproper being of the animal or of animality (and Deleuze notes human

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animals can live in a world that has fewer a�ects than that of the tick!)lies in this proper peculiarity of self-production and possession which doesnot lose itself but rather remains ìts self' in this autopoietic drive orcapacity. This drive has a self-reserve and circular production which is notre¯ective. Thus for Heidegger neither the animal's mode of being nor itsbehavior direct themselves toward beings as such.

The essential lesson of this analysis is that ultimately, for Heidegger(and Deely) the environing world (Umgebung), or Umwelt of the animalis ready-to-hand but not present-at-hand. The animal is open to its sur-roundings, but not as a world that is not coextensive or reducible to theprejacent environment. Heidegger gives detailed accounts of experimentson bees (amongst other examples) recounted by UexkuÈ ll in TheoreticalBiology, to illustrate the thesis that the behavior of the animal (in thiscase the bee) is not determined by the presence or absence of honey or¯owers but by a play of inhibited and released drives. The bee is capturedby the sun and does not grasp the sun as such Ð it does not view the sun.The animal is encircled by a ring of drives within which it is both open andcaptivated Ð it is incapable of ever properly attending to something assuch (Heidegger 1995: 248). Heidegger is distinguishing this approachfromUexkuÈ ll who suggests that the animal lives an Umwelt as an Umwelt.It will be in anthroposemiosis that this realization occurs. However,Heidegger moderates the analysis:

This question now leads us toward the distinction we tried to express by talkingof man's world-forming and the animal's poverty in world, a poverty which, roughly

put, is nonetheless a kind of wealth. The di�culty of the problem lies in the factthat in our questioning we always and inevitably interpret the poverty in worldand the peculiar encirclement proper to the animal in such a way that we end uptalking as if that which the animal relates to and the manner in which it does so

were some being, and as if the relation involved were an ontological relation thatis manifest to the animal. The fact that this is not the case forces us to claim thatthe essence of life can become accessible only if we consider it in a deconstructive

[abbauenden] fashion. But this does not mean that life represents somethinginferior or some kind of lower level in comparison with human Dasein. On thecontrary, life is a domain which possesses a wealth of openness with which the

human world may have nothing to compare. (Heidegger 1995: 255)

Deely claims that although Heidegger makes use of the term òntologicalrelation' he does not have the univocal concept of it as developed byPoinsot.28 The ontological relation is not manifest to the animal because itis imperceptible, and in its proper univocal being neither mind-dependentnor mind-independent (although it will be one or the other at any given hicand nunc). Animals can be aware of àbsent signi®eds' (objects that arenot actually present) but these absent objects would always have some

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physical instantiation. Relations as the ìncorporeal vapour' (Deleuze) orèthereal linkage itself between the terms', can be understood but not seenor touched (Deely 1993: 261). As Deely emphasizes animals see relatedthings but not the relations (which can only be understood, not perceived).The human being by distinguishing things from objects (and the relationsfrom both) within anthroposemiosis, can use the relations to create thesystems of communication we call languages. Maturana will argue in asimilar way, claiming that animals do not live in language although hewill suggest that some animals can begin to enter into language (as acoordination of a coordination of acts) when living with languaging humananimals. However, Deely will claim that although animals can enter intocoordinations of coordinations of acts, as long as these coordinationsterminate in sense-perceptible objects language in its species-speci®chuman sense has not been attained. Animals communicate and are awareof their surroundings, but not of their surroundings as surroundings, oftheir Umwelt as an Umwelt or objective world grasped as a whole inrelation to itself, which requires a distinction of objects from things andrelations from both. This as Deleuze and Guattari observe is whattransforms an Umwelt into a Welt, or to use Deely's term a Lebenswelt.It is a question of thresholds. The fact of Guattarian `non-human enun-ciation', `proto-subjectivity', òntological intensities', `speci®c enunciativeconsistencies', or a `non-human for-itself' does not gainsay a distinctionbetween human and non-human enunciation.29 What is remarkable inGuattari's `fractal ontology' and `transversalist' enlargement of enuncia-tion, is the refusal to accept the couplet Being-being as an ontologicalbinary digit and replace it with polyphonic Being and processes ofdeterritorialization deploying particular relations of alterity.30 Emphasis isno longer placed on Being but on the manner of being, the machinationproducing the existent (Guattari 1995: 108±109).Deleuze and Guattari's (1996) appropriation of Ruyer's work gives

us one line of approach to the question of whether a robot (as it currentlyexists) has an Umwelt.31 To the extent that the robot is not a primary trueform', i.e., that it is not self-producing and does not have the `properpeculiarity' of autopoietic systems, it cannot even have `poverty inworld' never mind an Umwelt!32 Guattari (1995) will seek (developing anapproach already proposed by Sta�ord Beer) to expand the concept ofautopoiesis, arguing that when one thinks in terms of the machinicassemblages that machines constitute with human beings, `they becomeipso facto autopoietic'. This coupling between the biosphere and mech-anosphere (and reworking of the concept of autopoiesis) allows for amore complex approach to questions of non-human enunciation andà-signifying semiotics' which will not be developed further at this point.

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As we previously indicated, Deely (1998: 217) calls `Peirce's ``new listof categories'' his ``semiotic categories'', or ``categories of experience'',because precisely what they do is account for the transformation of theanimal Umwelt into the human Lebenswelt'. I will conclude this article bygiving a short summary of Deely's argument.

The fundamental argument is that Peirce's category of Firstness, whichis for Deely equivalent to Avicenna's univocal being, or Aquinas' `being-as-®rst-known' (primum intelligibile), (or within the context of this thesisDeleuze's `sense'), provides for the intelligibility of the objective world(Umwelt) presented in perception, apprehended in relation to itself. AsDeely notes:

Here, however, at the level of primum intelligibile, it is not a question of any givenobject of perception being cognized in relation to itself. It is rather a question

of the objective world as such, the Umwelt as the totality of objecti®cation at anygiven moment, being grasped in relation to itself. (1998: 220)

For Deely this is Peirce's category of `Firstness' `the conception of beingor existing independently of anything else' (CP 6.32); `the present ingeneral' (CP 1.547). It is the apprehension of the imperceptible `relation toitself' that transforms the Umwelt into a welt or lebenswelt over andabove the naturally biologically determined Umwelt of zooÈ semiosis. ForDeely it is at this point that Umwelt becomes present-at-hand ratherthan ready-to-hand. Firstness as a species-speci®cally human mode ofapprehension establishes the possibility of asking the question `Whatis that?':

The animal aware of its objective world [Umwelt] in such a fashion is alonepositioned to form the conception along with reality, and of a piece with it, ofotherness. Otherness (present-at-handness, in contrast to the ready-to-handness

which reduces the environment within objectivity to the level of that extension oforganismic dispositions which is the essence of an Umwelt proportioned to thebiological nature of the cognizing organism) arises precisely within experience

through `brute actions of one subject or substance on another, regardless oflaw or of any third subject' (CP 5.469). It is `the conception of being relative to,the conception of reaction with, something else' (CP 6.32). It is, in a word, the

conception of `something other', of one thing di�erent from another thing withinthe play of objects of awareness. The experience of otherness within ®rstness is themotivation of every question of the form `What is that?' (Deely 1998: 226)

Deely concludes his account of the relevance of Peirce's `semiotic cate-gories', which unlike Aristotle's or Kant's, are designed to express theinterweaving of mind-dependent and mind-independent relations in theunivocal being of the sign relation (as an ontological relation); by claiming

160 P. Bains



that although Heidegger does not have the clarity of Peirce's thoughton sign relations and their manner of being, what Heidegger doescontribute is an extraordinary analysis of the distinction within humanexperience between objects and things subsumed within the concept ofbeing-as-®rst-known.I will conclude by suggesting that Deleuze's `logic of sense' should not be

ignored in any attempt to understand `things' as signs, and their èxternal'relations on a univocal plane of immanence.33 Language understood as therelation between a proposition and thing is only possible because of theincorporeality of univocal sense, attributed to bodies but distinguishedfrom them. It is the èvent' of sense that allows for language to be in relationwith things. The question of the truth or falsity of a proposition requiresthis primary univocity of sense and relation. Even a false proposition has asense. Deleuze thought that everything he wrote constituted a theory ofsigns and both Deleuze and Guattari saw Peirce as the modern inventor ofsemiotics. A semiotics that they complexify for their own peculiar purposesand which makes creative use of Jakob von UexkuÈ ll's pioneering work.

Notes

1. Latour (1999: 21) sets up an opposition between the postmodern as seeking `more

absence, more debunking, more negation, more deconstruction' and the nonmodern

which seeks `proof of presence, deployment, a�rmation, and construction'.

2. The expression non-languaging will be developed throughout this article. What is at

issue is the extent to which animals other than humans grasp the relation of signi®cation

as such. The argument to be presented here is that non-human animals communicate

but do not live in language. They use signs without knowing they are using signs. Some

®nd this abduction shocking, arrogant, and anthropocentric. In doing so they conserve

a principle rather than exercise their understanding.

3. This is a critical issue for Professor Humberto Maturana (1980). The frog does not

àim' at anything _ `What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain'.

4. There is a web site dedicated to furthering Jakob von UexkuÈ ll's work at:

nhttp://www.zbi.ee/*uexkullo.5. Deleuze often refers to UexkuÈ ll's tick. Heidegger seems more fascinated or benumbed

by UexkuÈ ll's description of the being of the bee. `Beeing'.

6. Here `meaning' is like Peirce's `thirdness' Ð mediation or relation as an interpretive

process over and above dyadic physical interaction or `secondness'. The connecting

link of relations, that are necessarily èxternal' to their terms.

7. Bateson (1977) a�rms this in claiming that `mental process' (immanent to `mind' and

`nature') is triggered by `news of di�erence', not energy. It is news of di�erence that is

circulating Ð `the pattern that connects'. Bateson illustrates this with UexkuÈ ll's tick

(although he does not actually mention UexkuÈ ll).

A tick on the twig of a tree waits for the smell of butyric acid that would mean `mammal

in the neighbourhood'.When he smells the butyric acid, hewill fall from the tree. But if he

Umwelten 161



stays long enoughon the tree and there is no butyric acid, hewill fall from the tree anyway

and go to climb up another one. He can respond to the `fact' that something does not

happen. (Bateson 1977: 241)

8. Deleuze and Guattari often refer to UexkuÈ ll's work. In Deleuze (1993: 92±93) the

following passage occurs which is worthy of an extended quotation; it both beautifully

expresses the material we are engaging with and suggests that the human monad or soul

can sink to a level lower than that of the tick:

The tiniest of all animals has glimmers that cause it to recognize its food, its enemies, and

sometimes its partner. If life implies a soul, it is because proteins already attest to an

activity of perception, discrimination, and distinction Ð in short, a `primary force' that

physical impulsions and chemical a�nities cannot explain _ If life has a soul, it is

because it perceives, distinguishes, or discriminates, and all animal psychology is ®rst

of all a psychology of perception. In most cases, the soul gets along quite well with a

very few clear or distinguished perceptions: the soul of the tick has three, including

a perception of light, an olfactory perception of its prey, and a tactile perception of the

best place to borrow, while everything else in the great expanse of Nature, which the tick

nevertheless conveys, is only a numbness, a dust of tiny dark, and scattered perceptions.

But if an animal scale exists, or an èvolution' in the animal series, it is insofar as

increasingly numerous di�erential relations or a deepening order are determining a

zone of clear expression that is both more extensive and increasingly hermetic. Each of

the conscious perceptions that comprise the zone is associated with others in the in®nite

process of reciprocal determination _ Few monads fail to believe themselves damned

at certain moments of their existence. When their clear perceptions are now and again

extinguished, when they recede into the night Ð in relation to this the tick's life appears

to be singularly rich. But with freedom there also comes the moment when a soul is won

over to itself and can whisper a convalescent's astonishment, `My God, what did I do in

all of these years?' (Deleuze 1993: 92±93)

9. The title of an unpublished article by Professor Keith Ansell-Pearson of Warwick

University (as well as a term in Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 314, that refers to UexkuÈ ll).

I have appropriated parts of Keith's succint account of the relation between UexkuÈ ll's

ethology and Deleuze and Guattari's work.

10. Humberto Maturana will call this mutual speci®cation or contrapuntal relation

`structural coupling'. He once told me that UexkuÈ ll `had everything except the notion

of structural coupling' which is a more analytical and less musical account of nature's

`harmony'. Maturana does employ one example drawn from UexkuÈ ll's work:

A ¯y seen walking on a painting by Rembrandt does not interact with a painting

by Rembrandt. The painting of Rembrandt exists only in the space of human aesthetics,

and its properties, as they de®ne this cultural space, cannot interplay with the properties

of the walking ¯y. (Maturana 1980: 51).

Varela's ènaction' or èmbodied action' is a version of UexkuÈ ll's Umwelt theory.

Cognition depends on various linked sensorimotor capacities (perceptors and

e�ectors Ð a double articulation). The organism ènacts' or `brings forth' (taking up

the Heideggerian hervorbringen) a world.

Varela (in a personal communication) sees UexkuÈ ll as having had a `good

intuition' but dismisses his semiotic approach as inadequate in accounting for the

generative mechanisms of meaning which Varela et al. (1991) try to engage with. In

162 P. Bains



Varela et al. (1991: 174) they nevertheless quote Merleau-Ponty referring speci®cally to

the concept of Umwelt. Their approach is in terms of observable neurophysiology and

a `naturalized' Husserlian phenomenology that does not seem to accept the `realist'

possibilities of a post-Peircian semiotics that includes external or ontological relations.

11. Consult Deleuze (1994), chapter one, `Di�erence in itself', for Deleuze's complex

and original propositions on the univocity of being. Deleuze traces a complex path

through Scotus (thinking univocity), Spinoza (a�rming), and Nietzsche (realizing)

which I am not competent enough to engage with. The emphasis here is on the relevance

of univocity to relation as such. Deleuze likes grouping thinkers in threesomes. For

a logic of the event it will be the Stoics, Leibniz, Whitehead. For the logic of sense it

will be the Stoics, Gregory of Rimini, Meinong. Ultimately, in Deleuze and Guattari

(1996), it will be Spinoza who constructs `the best' plane of immanence. That is, one that

does not give in to any transcendent plane. A univocal plane Ð an abstract machine or

rhizosphere.

12. For the `serious student', Alliez (1996) engages with Scotus and the univocity of being.

I make no attempt to emulate his account which also makes reference to the ®ne article

by Boulnois (1989). The newRoutledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy has a valuable entry

on Duns Scotus written by Barry Taylor.

13. Deely's classic account of ontological and transcendental relatives i.e., the two kinds

of relative being can be found in Appendix 1 (`Contrasting ontological and

transcendental relatives') of Deely 1994a; I base my account on his singular e�orts.

14. See particularly Deely 1988a.

15. See Deleuze (1990: 34±35), for his reference to Avicenna.

16. One possible area of research would be the connections between Avicenna and Su®

`thought', particulary the Su® concept of imaginal worlds (Corbin 1978).

17. See Deely's brief discussion of Hegel in Deely 1985.

18. My translation. Ruyer was aware of UexkuÈ ll's work, which he also sought to free from

its Kantian heritage. See also Ruyer (1952), a work that signi®cantly in¯uences Deleuze

and Guattari's ®nal work (1996):

Note that von UexkuÈ ll, in his general philosophy [cf. Theoretical Biology, Preface], is

Kantian and confuses, as does Merleau-Ponty, comprehensive biology and critical

biology. For example: Àll reality is subjective appearance. This must constitute the one

great, fundamental admission, even of biology'. We take his `word' in itself, without

reference to his general doctrine. (Ruyer 1952: 217)

19. It is important to understand that an animal can be aware of àbsent signi®eds'. The

critical distinction is that a non-languaging animal is not aware of what are in principle

imperceptible objects, such as relations or linguistic objects.

20. I am encouraged to see that my interest in Deely's semiotic has infected/a�ected Keith

Ansell-Pearson's thoughts.

21. This univocal `truth of the relative' rather than the intrinsically negative `relativity of

truth' (tied to a subject) will be engaged with at another place and time. It is the

approach taken by thinkers such as Deleuze and Guattari, Latour, Stengers, and the

actual practice of science.

22. This of course begs the question of whether robots or computers haveUmwelten.Wewill

get to this ...

23. For Deely's treatment of icons within a Poinsot/Peirce framework consult Deely 1986b.

24. Heidegger wanted The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics to be the ®rst lecture

series published in the Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works). It was ®rst published in

Umwelten 163



German in 1983 and published in English in 1995. No where else in his work does

Heidegger engage so extensively with experimental science, in particular the Umwelt

theory of UexkuÈ ll.

25. The most forceful criticism of Heidegger's biology lectures comes from Krell (1992). It

is certain that Heidegger's approach is awkward and I am not seeking to defend his

understanding. However, it remains a remarkable attempt which cannot be dismissed

out of hand. A semiotic approach in the line of Peirce/Deely o�ers a perhaps more

nuanced approach.

26. Deleuze and Guattari (1996: 183±186) also signi®cantly return to UexkuÈ ll's work,

suggesting that art begins with the animal, àt least with the animal that carves out

a territory and constructs a house (both are correlative, or even one and the same, in

what is called a habitat)'. A contrapuntal theory of Nature where nature and art become

indistinguishable. The bower bird is a `complete artist' (1996: 184), Scenopoeetes

dentirostris. Alliez (1993: 94) will seek to distinguish Deleuze and Guattari's approach

to ethology from Heidegger's phenomenology of behavior and `word-poverty' of the

animal by commencing with refrains, counterpoints, and expressive qualities; assem-

blages and becomings rather than behavior Ð `becoming-colors, becoming-sounds'.

A superior ethology _27. Haar (1993: 160 fn. 8) notes (without any development of the relation) that this proper

peculiarity of self-production or autopoiesis `would come close to the notion of the

`ùni®ed ®eld'' or `àbsolute domain'' of individuality or presence, which according to

R. Ruyer (1950) would characterize life'.

This is a truly interesting conceptual relationship as Deleuze and Guattari draw

signi®cantly on Ruyer's work, especially in Deleuze and Guattari (1996) and Deleuze

(1993). For Deleuze and Guattari, following Ruyer, the organism has an àbsolute

interiority' and the brain is à primary true form' or àbsolute domain' in `self-survey'.

For further insight into these terms see Bains (1997) which engages with the relation

between Deleuze, Guattari, and Ruyer.

28. In personal correspondence Deely makes the following observation: `Remember

that relatio secundum esse, unlike relatio secundum dici which has already the Latin

one-word synonym transcendentalis, never acquired a one-word counterpart among the

Latins. So my `òntological'' relation is a neologism for the purpose. The term occurs

in Heidegger, but not the concept, i.e., not the notion of the relatio secundum esse

indi�erent to the otherwise contrasting orders of what is and is not independent of

cognition. I have since wondered if there might not have been a better choice; but what

might it be still eludes me'.

29. See Corrington (1994) for further discussion of the di�erence between human and animal

Umwelten undertaken within a generalized Peirce/Deely perspective. `Human meaning

horizons are not simply augmented versions of animal Umwelten, but have distinctive

features that radically alter the semiotic structures of the world' (1994: 188).

30. As Corrington (1994: 188±189) notes, traces of alterity/otherness within zooÈ semiosis do

not always constitute or generate apprehension of their source, or involve conscious

awareness of otherness. This requires an awareness of relations. This is not in itself

a judgment but a distinction.

31. Emmeche provides the most comprehensive discussion of this question in his essay

`Does a Robot have an Umwelt?' (in this issue). The answer is no. `Thus only genuine

living beings (organisms and especially animals [as active subjects]) can be said to live

experientially an Umwelt'.

32. As Deleuze (1993: 104) notes following Ruyer (and Whitehead), À great line of di�er-

ence does not separate the organic from the inorganic, but crosses the one like the other

164 P. Bains



by distinguishing what is individual fromwhat is a collective or mass phenomenon, what

is an absolute form and what are massive, molar ®gures or structures'. Remember also

that Haar (note 27 above) sees a relation between Heidegger's `proper peculiarity' of the

organism and Ruyer's àbsolute domains' which Deleuze and Guattari draw on

particularly in their ®nal work (1996).

33. This is one of the central claims of Zourabichvili (1996).

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Paul Bains (b. 1952) is Lecturer at Murdoch University in Western Australia

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Umwelten 167



Documents

Umwelten - Murdoch University...Umwelten PAUL BAINS It would be foolish if we attempted to impute or ascribe philosophical inadequacy to Uexku¨ll’s interpretations, instead of recogniz-ing